I, for one, am a fan of whistle blower legislation. I know their pain. I have noticed a disturbing trend lately and I just don't know to whom I can turn.
Many, if not most, of my friends are well aware of my, shall we say, disability - my inability to retain even the simplest information over the short term. I have adapted. Conformed to my sentence. I have routines and tricks to which I do my best to adhere to.
For instance, I put my keys in the same place every time I come home. Not due to some anal insistence that things have their place. I would not be disturbed by seeing my keys out of place. I have only one reason for putting them down in the same place every time. That is where I look for them. If they aren't there, I have no inkling of where I put them and off I go on a long hunt through recent pants and jackets. A hunt, I should note, that would be shorter, if only I could remember which pants and which jackets I'd worn recently. But that's the problem - I don't.
Donna sometimes finds my keys where they shouldn't be. A place as crazy as say the dining room table or the coffee table or my desk (note none of these are pants or jackets) and knowing that I will have ransacked the laundry hamper before even considering these plain sight places, she will move them to the shelf where they ought to sit. No need to me. No need to say, "Dude, I moved your keys. They are on the shelf." No need, because I have no idea where they are, but I know where I'd look - the shelf, because that's where my keys go.
She too has come to terms with this handicap. Donna went out one day while baking banana bread. She asked me to take the banana bread out of the oven when it was done. And then she stopped. What were the chances? I was watching TV and that is plenty of distraction. A mere phone call is all that is needed. TV is more than enough to push aside a thought like check bread in twenty minutes. What to do?
My mother always said I had selective memory, but the truth is I like banana bread and I really would hate to see it burn. Donna's solution: She put oven mitts on my hands knowing that I would go to change the channel and think why do I have oven mitts on my hands? Whether you see that as sad or brilliant, doesn't matter. I ate some delicious banana bread that day.
Which brings me to the disturbing trend. Someone is taking advantage of me. Using my deficiency to their own end. I won't say who, because it hurts too much. But let me say this, "I told her you called."
